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Keystone XL

It is 6 am on February 17, 2013, and I can hear the birds outside the window of my hotel room, inviting in the morning with their song. Before the day is through they, and the world, will know that we mean it when we say that we will not allow the northern leg of the Keystone XL pipeline to finish its slither across the length of our country, in order to pipe toxic tar sand bitumen to China, while risking the planet to do it.

On November 27, news broke about a black teenager in Jacksonville named Jordan Davis who was shot and killed by 45-year-old Michael David Dunn apparently after an argument between the two over loud music. On November 28, news broke about U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice, the frontrunner to replace Hillary Clinton for Secretary of State, who has financial holdings in a number of companies that could benefit from the building of the destructive Keystone XL project.

If TransCanada has its way, almost 1.1 million barrels of tar sands oil - the world’s dirtiest, most toxic, and most difficult-to-clean-up-when-it-spills oil - will roll down the Keystone XL pipeline to the Gulf of Mexico.

In the Dakotas, members of the proud Lakota Nation rose in protest this week to join a 48-hour hunger strike in opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline—and all tar sands pipelines—they say will destroy precious water resources and ancestral lands in the U.S and in Canada.

Two controversial stories hit home on the Gulf last week: One, concerning the ill-advised but fated Keystone XL pipeline, which President Obama decided to greenlight the southern portion of, directly impacting the Gulf; and another concerning the troublesome trend of young, African-American males losing their lives after mostly trivial encounters with law enforcement officials, or those pretending to be.

With news that President Obama will fast track the building of the southern leg of the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, Texans in its path say their health and property rights are endangered by a torrent of corrosive tar sands oil from Canada.